throughaphase | The Jean Grey School- Tuesday

The Jean Grey School- Tuesday

Normalcy these days at the school was chaos. It was too many kids for too few teachers who were under a lot of stress, and there wasn't any real consistency to who was around and who was off fighting. Also, in Kitty's opinion, it was all pretty stupid. And now with the whole Phoenix Five mess, where five of her old friends and teammates had had the Phoenix Force they'd all been so worried about split among them and were now being publicly revered for it, she trusted nothing.

And sure enough, when she heard the words "you should see this," the only surprise was that she wasn't in the middle of class when whoever showed up.

When she walked outside with Warbird, they found Peter, armored up and on fire, floating in the sky above the school. "Get back to your classes," Kitty said, not looking away from him. "If I don't come back, call the Avengers."

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"That is their fault, not ours," Colossus insisted seriously. "They are too stubborn to see the truth. That what we are doing is for the good of the world. If I wished to destroy the Avengers, the world, everything... do you know how easy it would be? I would barely have to lift a finger, and it would all go away in one big ball of fire."

And then he laughed again. "But I haven't done that, have I? And I do not plan to. The Avengers refuse to accept the new order of things. The world no longer needs them to save it. It has already been saved. The X-Men have won. The Avengers will not be allowed to stand in the way of progress. We will hunt down every one of them if that it what it takes. If you ask me, it seems a small price to pay for paradise."

She'd intended to be careful about this, but it wasn't like she was great at that anyway. "Peter, stop this. Please. Open your eyes. Look what you've become."

She was beginning to think this wasn't going to accomplish anything.

"Jean Grey was the Phoenix for years," Colossus pointed out. "And after her, Rachel Summers. I don't remember you speaking this way to either of them."

"I don't remember Jean or Rachel locking up anyone who dared disagree with them," Kitty said. It was really pretty fascist. "I should go back to the school now."

"That school!"

Colossus bent down, pounding his fists into the ground. It felt like an earthquake.

"Wolverine's ridiculous school! Is that all you care about anymore!"

"She was asking you to leave politely," Clint said as he approached. He'd been willing to let Kitty handle Peter on her own right up to that earthquake; now Peter had a cranky Avenger with a poorly concealed bow to contend with. "You really should go now."

"Katya can speak for herself," Colossus said, like Katya hadn't just been speaking for herself and saying things he didn't like.

"She has spoken, and she stopped picking you a while ago."

Yep, he was going there. Sorry, Kitty.

"I think that maybe this is the time for everybody to go to their corners and settle down," Kitty said calmly, because she was trying to de-escalate.

"I was perfectly fine in my corner until the ground in my corner started shaking," Clint said. He at least took a step back though.

Colossus looked to Kitty. "You would choose this school, this Avenger, over everything I am offering you? Think about the good you could do!"

He glanced back at Clint, and the teachers who were starting to come back out. "What if I was to take it all away? What would you have left to choose from then?"

Clint hoped Peter didn't notice how he tightened his grip on his bow as he tried to look sympathetic. "Is that really what you want? To force Kitty to pick you? To know she's only with you because you took her other options away? How long do you think you could keep her happy that way?"

"I suppose we'll see," Colossus said, storming towards him to swing a fist in his direction.

The good news was, Clint got a shot off at Colossus' chest before that fist swing sent him flying into a wall.

The bad news was... ow, that wall hurt, and the noise Clint's head made as he hit it was probably not great.

Kitty felt her stomach drop somewhere around her toes, but rather than panic, her reaction was to grab Peter's hand, and phase, and then drop down.

She emerged from the ground a minute later, alone, and she was going to have to suffer through how tired that just made her. "Left him two miles down," she said, getting to the surface. "Won't hold him for long. Get Clint inside, and seal the doors. Now!"

There wasn't a chance for that. Right behind her was Colossus, shooting up through the ground like a... well, phoenix, stopping in midair in front of what was left of the teaching staff. "Katya, you disappoint me."

"You'll have to get past the X-Men first!" Husk cried. Colossus knocked her away, sending her flying.

Krakoa tried to swallow him. It couldn't even close its mouth around him.

Toad tried to grab him. He went flying, too.

Lockheed blew a fireball at him. He was smart enough to get out of the way.

"You people," Colossus said, "are not X-Men."

Kitty popped up from the ground in front of him, phasing her hand directly into his chest, her hand around his heart. She could kill him like this. She could also lose her hand like this. That wouldn't end very well for him, either.

It was enough to get him to stop, at least. When your first love turned best friend was willing to kill you, it tended to put things on hold.

"Don't make me," Kitty said, for her sake as much as his.

Clint groaned as he rolled over onto his side, his mouth falling open as he took in the sight before him. "Kitty? You're... you're missing part of an arm there..."

For as glad as she was to hear Clint’s voice, Kitty didn’t have time to respond.

In her phased form, she could walk on air, walk through fire or water. Having her hand through Peter shouldn’t do anything to her. Then the fire around him flared, and she yelled, jerking her hand back as her entire left arm erupted in a burn.

When your first love turned best friend was willing to kill you, you felt less bad about things like that.

“Make you do what? Burn? You did that to yourself,” Colossus said.

Clint probably shouldn't have been trying to get up, but Kitty didn't usually get hurt, so that noise shook him enough to get him onto his knees, at least. "Get. Away. From her."

Kitty stepped in Colossus’ way, making a gesture she hoped told Clint to stay down. She only had one trick left, to appeal on a personal level, and she’d ptobably ruined that by trying to kill him already.

“You’ll have to kill me,” she warned.

God damn, her arm hurt.

With that, Colossus exploded, literally knocking Kitty over with the force of his anger.

“I could kill you and bring you back in the blink of an eye! I could make you do whatever I want! Don’t you see? I am fire and life incarnate! Now and forever, I am Phoenix! I am-“

And then he caught sight of the scene before him. Kitty, on the ground and hurt. Clint, who he actually liked. Supposed friends, all thrown around like they were nothing. One of them had hit the statue of Jean in front of the school and broke it, and the statue’s head was lying near his feet.

It was an image he wasn’t going to forget, ever.

A long moment later, without another word, he shot into the air and flew away.

Once he was gone, Kitty ran over to Clint, kneeling beside him. “Are you okay?”

"I'm fine," Clint said automatically. Then, because it was Kitty, he said, "Whacked my head pretty good but... I'm okay. What about you?"

"It's a good thing the kid who patched me up after getting impaled that time is still here," Kitty said, and she was very definitely not touching or doing anything with that one arm right now. "Can you walk?"

Clint nodded, then groaned because nodding was a terrible idea, and slowly got up. He'd get away from the wall eventually, maybe. "I totally could have taken him, for the record."

She got up, offering her good arm to help him. The other teachers were picking themselves up, too, and some were going to get the students away from the entrance where they were watching.

"Yes, you could have," she totally lied.

"See, that was the right answer, you're so smart," Clint teased, before his face fell a little and he held onto Kitty tighter. "I'm sorry," he said quietly. "I should have handled that better, and he shouldn't have... I'm sorry this is such a mess."

“It was going to be a mess from the second he decided to come here,” Kitty said. “You know him and me... it hasn’t been like that for a really long time, right? On both sides.”

That felt important.

"I know," Clint said, managing a small smile. "I'm the one who put a ring on you, and I know you wouldn't have said yes to that if you still had feelings elsewhere.'

"That's right. And it goes for him, too. We're friends. Or, we were."

This one was going to hurt for a while. Losing Illyana had been bad, but Peter, too...

Clint tightened the hold he had around Kitty's waist. "I'm sorry," he said again. "I'm so sorry. Maybe... maybe we can still help them see reason, someday."

Kitty nodded. It wasn't like the X-Men hadn't been at each other's throats ever before. She was relatively sure at the end of this at least a lot of things could be fixed. But this one was going to hurt, for a long time.

"Come on," she said. "Let's get us both fixed up."

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The Jean Grey School- Tuesday

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